What Do The Dead Fear?
by Manic Procrastination
Summary: After sacrificing themselves to save their universe, the Entities find themselves in a new world in new humanoid forms, exhausted and without their powers. But that won't stop them from their agendas


**AN: First fic for me. Hope it's not too bad. I also hope I can get another chapter up soon, if time is nice to me.**

Exploding. That was the last sensation Parallax could remember. And the thing he could recall being blinded by his fellow Entities' Light.

His vision was all a blur, and the ache was there. He groaned and rubbed his head. Instantly, he noticed something was wrong. His cranium felt... small, and his horns were gonr. And his muzzle was mostly flat by the feel of it. Bringing his arm away, the first thing he saw was a hand. Not his clawed appendage but a human hand wearing a black glove. He made the fingers move, and they obeyed his mental command. This was... unexpected.

"Am I assuming a different form?" The Entity of Fear wondered aloud. Instead of waiting g for an answer he knew he wouldn't get, he closed his eyes and focused on his true form. And nothing changed. "Okay then. Bit of a setback." He wasn't afraid. Parallax (as he claimed) wasn't scared of anything. This was just mildly irritating, and was far preferable to being locked inside a forsaken battery. He looked at his surroundings, and assumed the worst: he was back on Oa, the home of those conniving Guardians of the Universe and their soldiers. Why else was everything so green? And here he was, unable to access his real form. Running to the edge of... whatever he was standing on, he looked down. "Okay, this is not Oa."

Beneath him wasn't an emerald metropolis, but an abyss, swirling and strangely hypnotic. Bringing his eyes back up, he finally took in the finer details of his environment. It was green no doubt, but not per say bright. Decorated with skulls and littered with floating islands and doors. It reminded him of those horror movies humans are so fond of.

"Well, the new guy's out of it," a male voice laughed from above. "It must've _just_ happened to him." The Fear Entity tilted his head back and saw two, there was no other word to describe them, punks on a flying motorcycle

 _Perhaps I'm stuck in a giant construct of Rayner's,_ Parallax said inwardly without much seriousness. Only that human artist could think up something like this.

The green-haired female gave her riding mate a less-than-friendly punch to the arm. "Johnny, don't be such a jerk. Remember when it happened to us?"

As they bickered, Parallax noticed something. He couldn't feel their fear. He looked down at his hand. Coming off of it like a mist was yellow smoke. Taking his hand away and observing the rest of his human body, he saw it was exuding off him everywhere. So he wasn't powerless, they just weren't experiencing fear in front of him. Bit of a downer but to expected from this frail, pitiable form.

"Hey, suit," Johnny called down. "Sorry." Evidently, the woman won their argument.

"Whatever." Parallax wasn't exactly interesting in words at the moment.

The biker's woman looked at him with sympathy and curiosity. Like him, she took in his appearance. A black three price suit, gloves, and shoes, she surmised the former was custom made. The lining and design made it look insect-like. His dress shirt, eyes, and hair were all the same unhealthy, harsh shade of yellow. As he turned his back to them, they tilted their heads slightly. A strange symbol took the majority of the back of his jacket; a sort of circle with symmetrical lines branching out of it.

Propelling himself upward to where he was level with them, the former Enitity looked relieved with himself. "Well, I can still levitate. That's good." He turned his attention to the duo. "What is this place?" He hated asking (as he was used to demanding) but they did not fear him and his powers were depleted. He was not fond of the conditions he was in.

"Yep, definitely a new guy," Johnny lazily replied. "You're in the Ghost Zone, man. You're, well, kinda dead."

Parallax stared at him, taking in the words. His memory of the last thing he did before awaking here.

Relic, the being from the universe before. The other Entities coming together. The...

"Explosion..." he spoke to himself aloud.

"Is that how you died?" Kitty asked.

Shaking himself off, the Yellow Impurity steeled himself. "Preposterous! I am Parallax, Enitity of Fear! I am unstoppable! I am immortal!"

Johnny was not impressed by the boasting. "We're _all_ immortal now, Parsley Slacks," he said intentionally mispronouncing this Wall Street reject's name.

"It's **PARALLAX!** " He had enough anger at the moment that his fellow Enitity, The Butcher, would be drawn to him.

The embodiment of Fear had been in this new place with this new form for five minutes and he already felt a crawling under every inch of his skin. His fingers curling and his serrated teeth grinded against each other before he flew off, leaving a golden vapor trail behind him.

"He sure kicked the bucket in a bad mood," Johnny said as he and his girl watched him zoom away.

"Yeah. I hope he doesn't go feral. Wait, did he say 'still levitate?'"

* * *

Unbeknownst to the three of them, their entire conversation had been remotely observed. Clockwork, the Ghost of time, continued his surveillance of this being called Parallax.

"Interesting," he said as his appearance shifted from full grown to elderly. "You're not from the Ghost Zone, or Earth. You seem to be a native from... Somewhere Else."

* * *

As he rocketed to nowhere in particular, Parallax's temper cooled steadily. He'd been in more bothersome situations, and he had surmounted them. Then again, he wasn't stuck as a puny humanoid back then. Soaring through the green space, he restlessly looked around. Floating chunks of rocks and islands, as well as doors and windows riddled the entire place. He rhythmically passed oyher spirits who either waved nonchalantly, or shouted at him. He didn't care either way. Regaining influence could wait. Being imprisoned within the Green Central Battery for countless years had made him patient, able to bide his time.

As he passed a landmass frozen over in ice, he heard two voices coming from it.

"Em-ber! Em-ber!"

"Stop saying my name!"

Parallax shook his head and let out a disgusted breath as he continued on. No matter plain of existence he was on, humans were apparently the same. Though, he admitted they made entertaining puppets and decent hosts. He released a nostalgic sigh as he thought back to when he possessed the Green Lantern known as Hal Jordan. The terror they brought, the destruction they wrought. The ashes left in their wake. Good times.

He was so wrapped up in his memories, he almost didn't see the strangely colored vapor trail similar to his own. It caught his eye, and he came to a halt.

"Orange?" He ran a hand through it, making a small section dissipate. This color, he associated it with his "brother" and fellow Enitity. "Ophidian?" His eyes followed the trail, and saw that it lead to a castle, that had a draw bridge designed as a screaming face. If he were any of the other embodiments of the Emotioal Spectrum, he might have sought out his serpentine peer. But he didn't care. Ophidian was in a new home, and soon he would start collecting everything he saw. "Enjoy this place, you greedy snake. **I'm** going to find a way out."

* * *

Sure enough, Ophidian was indeed having a time in his new domain. And his relative was correct in the assumption of his collecting. Already, the room that had **his** new throne came with a sword in a pumpkin, and a fancy sarcophagus off to the side.

And like Parallax, he too was stuck in the form of a human. Any passerby would assume that every article of clothing he had on was made of snakeskin. Unlike Parallax, he didn't feel too bothered by it.

"I don't know where I am," he said to the sarcophagus as he pushed it back and forth put of boredom. "But that doesn't matter! Wherever I go and whatever I am, everything is-"

* * *

 **"-MINE!"**

"Yep, that's him alright," Parallax grinned as he rubbed his ears and made off in a blind search for an exit to this so-called Ghost Zone. Ophidian could out-roar a rocket engine. "Well, at least that explosion didn't screw over only me."

After what felt like hours of roaming around, he came to a stop in the middle of nowhere it felt. A good distance between him and any piece of land in any and every direction.

"You think this is getting me down?" He said to nobody, yet still as loud as he could without screaming. "I've been in worse places, and I've gotten out."

"You got some moxy," A loud, high-pitched voice said right next to him. Parallax glanced over. Right on the edge of his personal space was yet another ghost. This one had green skin, rectangle shades, wild silver-white hair, and wore a labcoat. He also lacked legs. "And you dont need to wear yourself out. In my experience, you just need to wait, and a portal will open for you."

Parallax raised an eyebrow at the claim. "Oh really?" He remained skeptical. Dumb luck was not a concept he followed.

This new acquaintance let out an arrogant laugh. "I, Technus, ghost master of science and electrical technology, can personally verify it! Not too long ago, I, Technus, was just floating along as we are now, in this same spot actually, when suddenly a vortex opened and took me to the humans' realm."

"Uh-huh." He still wasn't convinced.

"A skeptic, eh? Well, if you're a ghoul of patience-" Before another syllable could leave the technopath's mouth, a portal split the fabric of space in front of them. "Ah-ha! See! Now I, Technus, will be able to take over the world!"

The portal caught Parallax's attention, but that last sentence got his ear. "A takeover eh? Must be a lot of... fear to be spread with that."

"Absolutely!" Technus flew through the portal with Parallax following close behind.

"Well then. I, Parallax, am going to enjoy this."


End file.
